The rest of the division was still en route to Africa, and a second division, the 15th Panzer, would not arrive completely until the end of May. Rommel had his orders, but he had ignored orders in the past and been decorated for it. With British forces stripped to fight an exceedingly ill-advised campaign in Greece, he carried out a quick personal reconnaissance in his trusty little Fieseler Storch airplane, then launched an offensive in concert with his Italian partners Ariete armored division and the infantry divisions of X Corps, Bologna and Pavia.
He penetrated British defenses at El Agheila on March 24th, then drove on to Mersa el Brega on March 31st, pausing only long enough to take and ignore a number of radio messages from Berlin and Rome warning him not to do anything rash. These three tiny encounters, none of them exceeding regimental strength, were enough to unhinge the entire British defensive position in Cyrenaica. Rommel now expanded his "reconnaissance in force" into a general offensive, although the forces involved were still minuscule.
One column headed up the coast road towards Benghazi, while two more sliced across the Cyrenaican bulge, scooping up a mountain of British supplies at Msus and Mechili.
The British rear was in chaos. By April 11th, the Germans had surrounded the coastal fortress of Tobruk while smaller formations pressed on to the east, taking Bardia and reaching the Egyptian border at Sollum and Ft.
This was top speed maneuver, and the distances were vast, with the Afrika Korps covering over miles in less than two weeks. An amazing feat, to be sure, but may we not legitimately ask, Six-hundred miles to where?
Rommel had lunged from central Libya to the Egyptian border in a great bound, but now he had an unconquered fortress sitting in his rear, a serious threat to his lines of communication and supply.
Two hastily marshaled attempts to storm Tobruk went badly wrong. In the "Easter battle" April 10thth and the "battle of the Salient" April 30th-May 4th , the defenders of the 9th Australian Division hung tough.
Minefields channeled the German attacks, while direct fire from artillery, antitank guns, and supporting tanks shot up the assault forces quite badly and killed General Heinrich von Prittwitz, commander of 15th Panzer Division. The very presence of an unconquered Tobruk rendered the drive across the desert pointless. Indeed, for all the fame it had brought Rommel in the world press, this first campaign won him few friends among command echelons in Berlin. General Halder was especially unimpressed.
A German division-plus had overrun territory--a vast wasteland, to be precise--but it hadn't really won anything. There had been no battle of annihilation, no Kesselschlacht, nor could there have been.
The Afrika Korps had come a long way, but now sat precariously on the edge of nowhere. Although Rommel and his command had shown a satisfying level of aggression, something the entire officer corps understood, most of them saw his drive to the Egyptian border as a misfire.
Subsequent operations deserve the same cold eye. Both sides spent the summer rebuilding, replacing, and reinforcing, but by and large, the British were able to do it more rapidly. Crusader led to hard fighting with heavy losses on both sides. In the course of this wild ride the Panzers overran, in quick succession, the headquarters of the XXX Corps, 7th Armoured Division, 1st South African Division, and the 7th Armoured Brigade, unleashing panic as he went.
With his tank strength near zero and his largely Italian infantry well blooded, he had no choice but to retreat back to where he had start-ed, El Agheila. By now, the dynamic of the desert war was well established. There was an iron logic at work, and neither side could escape its grip.
Long advances did not simply take you away from your railhead, they took you entire time zones from it. Supply became not just a problem, but the problem.
Rommel was far more dangerous at El Agheila, relatively close to Tripoli, than he was on the Egyptian wire, six-hundred miles to the east. Likewise, the British were never more dangerous than when they were fighting with Egypt at their back, and never more helpless than when they had just overrun Cyrenaica.
It should not be surprising, then, that Rommel soon turned the tables on the Allies once again. In January , after spending a few short weeks regrouping his forces after their long retreat, Rommel was back on the offensive.
Churchill, for his part, was unwilling to settle for stalemate. By now, his Western Desert Force had been transformed into the new British Eighth Army, and Churchill pressured its commanders to produce a victory one way or another. As a result, Eighth Army launched a big offensive against Rommel all along the Egyptian Front beginning on November 18, Although the British lost tanks at the onset, Rommel's tanks ran low on fuel, forcing him to disengage and withdraw westward.
By Christmas, Eighth Army had pushed Rommel back the miles he had originally come. But Rommel was not about to take this lying down. After pausing to regroup and resupply, his Afrika Korps counter-attacked, beginning in January of , pushing Eighth Army back to the outskirts of Tobruk. After this a second stalemate developed and both sides dug in and prepared themselves for the next round in this back-and-forth desert fight.
It came on May 26, , as the Afrika Korps, aided by fresh Italian troops, staged a classic Blitzkrieg attack, surging through the British defenses, finally taking the city of Tobruk, and causing yet another hasty British retreat.
The battered British wound up at the village of El Alamein in northern Egypt, only 65 miles from the ancient city of Alexandria. Once again, so it seemed, the British stood on the verge of a humiliating rout — a defeat that could bring Hitler control of the entire Middle East. To finish off the British and seal the victory, Rommel needed significant troop reinforcements and supplies. When his Afrika Korps arrived on the outskirts of El Alamein poised to strike the British, Rommel had just operational tanks.
Hitler was now obsessed with achieving victory over Stalin and therefore brushed aside the strategic importance of Egypt. But this time, instead of leaving, they did the opposite, rushing in soldiers, tanks, artillery and ammunition to support the troops at El Alamein. The British were doing all they possibly could to gain control of the situation. With wondrous speed, they organized the shipment of fresh troops into the Alamein position Our one and only chance to overrun the remains of the British Eighth Army and occupy the east Egyptian desert at a stroke was irretrievably lost.
Despite the unfavorable odds, however, the ever-aggressive Rommel was not prepared to passively wait for the attack. At the end of August, he tried to seize the momentum and attacked El Alamein utilizing his limited resources.
The Germans expected a massive Allied counter-attack. Montgomery used a lull in the fighting to strengthen his position. In particular, he received many new tanks This meant that the allies had the advantage in terms of tanks. Montgomery to build up his forces until he had twice the number of men under his command as had Rommel. Rommel had selected his defensive position well and his flanks were protected by the sea to the north and to the south, by an impenetrable desert. Rommel directed the planning for the second battle of El Alamein.
He personally supervised the defensive line that was intended to repel the British counter-attack. The German strategy was to have a set piece battle, one that would draw the British and their allies into a brutal war of attrition that would sap their will to fight.
Then Rommel with his panzers would launch a counter-attack and he would go on and seize Alexandria. His army also had the support of the Royal Air Force that was increasingly able to dominate the skies and to nullify the threat posed by the Luftwaffe. After six more weeks of carefully building up the 8th army it was ready to go on the attack. The Allies had some , men and 1, tanks under Montgomery. They faced some , Germans and Italians with some tanks.
It should be noted that many of the Axis forces were poorly armed and trained Italian soldiers. Then he ordered his divisions to attack to the north of the German line and to the south. At this stage Rommel was not present at the battle.
He had returned to Germany for treatment as he was genuinely ill. His subordinates, followed his plans for the battle very closely. The initial Allied assault only made limited advances and the German lines continued to hold. Montgomery was a methodical men and he used massed artillery with infantry attacks with limited objectives to weaken the German lines. At this time the Axis divisions had begun to run short of supplies and ammunition.
Increasingly, it was only the brilliance of the Afrika Korps forces that prevented a British breakthrough. The British advances were slowed down by minefields and they sustained many casualties because of mines. Many tanks lost their tracks as they advanced. The battle began to resemble a WWI battle and it was not typical of the North African campaign which was characterized by highly mobile units fighting each other.
After some days of this type of fighting, Montgomery gambled on an assault on a broad front. New Zealand and Australian Divisions backed by British armor attacked some of the most heavily protected areas of the German lines. This caused panic among the Germans as it was unexpected and the defensive line came under increasing strain. On the whole his decisions were justified by victory: and in Africa victory often against odds.
His energetic preparations reflected his conviction that the expected invasion had to be defeated near the coast, because Allied air power would nullify large-scale armored counteroperations after the landing.
He believed, too, that the coming campaign should aim to defeat the invasion for one purpose: so that in the aftermath, peace might be negotiated in the west and a stalemate achieved in the east. Politically this was fantasy and militarily it failed; but for Rommel it was the only rational hope. By then Rommel had lost all faith in Adolf Hitler. After the Allied invasion had succeeded in establishing a front see D-Day , Rommel—who believed that Germany must now inevitably lose a war on two fronts—tried again personally to confront Hitler with reality.
He failed. Rommel, therefore, was now determined to surrender the German forces in the west unilaterally. Before that could happen he was wounded in an air attack on July He chose suicide and was given a state funeral.
Rommel has been variously described as a Nazi because of long personal devotion to Hitler or as a martyr of the German Resistance because of the manner of his death. He was neither. He was a straightforward, gifted, patriotic German officer, a charismatic commander and master of maneuver, caught up in the disaster of the Third Reich.
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